[unconed]

I identify with huge portions of this post. And if there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that I don't think like most other people.

I don't mean "my ideas are better" or "I have superior reasoning skills". I mean "the tools that I use to reason about the world are not the same that most people appear to use".

It's the only logical explanation for the fact that several popular ways in which humans communicate ideas (e.g. lectures/podcasts or poetry/lyrics) seem meaningless and like an inefficient use of time to me. I'm a visual thinker, visual communicator, and I convert all the important ideas in my life into mental pictures and animations. Mnemonics seem like the most idiotic thing ever to me, like remembering a person's phone number instead of what they're like.

Here's another one: I don't have a voice in my head. When I learnt from reddit discussions that most people experience their inner thoughts as an inner monologue, I was flabbergasted. If I heard a voice, I would think I was going insane. To me, thought is a completely parallel process of association, words are simply not necessary, they only serve to unnecessarily clamp you down into linear trains of thought early on. For years, I assumed that "learning to think in another language" was simply a metaphor for a certain level of proficiency in constructing sentences on the fly. Apparently it's not.

There is a lot more variation in how our brains work than people are generally aware of. It's certainly not acknowledged in culture or education. I think this is where a lot of the sentiment of 'not being normal' comes from, and telling people to stop worrying about it is not productive. It's something they will continue to be faced with their entire lives, even as all the 'neurotypical' folks insist nothing's different about you and you just need to get out more.

[RyanZAG]

You're trying to paint the picture that everyone else thinks the same way, but you're completely unique and think your own way. Would it not be more likely that everyone thinks in their own way, based off of their own experiences?

We all have the same hardware - amazingly complex/simple neural links. We all have different inputs, which means we all think differently. This isn't the important part - the important part is that you can communicate with other people and learn from them - from their different ways of thinking.

So I agree, I never said you were normal. I never said I was normal either, or that anybody else was normal. The idea of normal is something you're forcing on the world. Others are trying to force their own idea of normal on the world too, and yet others are trying to change themselves to match someone's idea.

Throw that idea away and live your own life.

Also, there is a lot of acknowledgment and research in education into the different ways different people learn and how to identify and teach different people. Unfortunately, it's a wicked problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

[nitrogen]

You're trying to paint the picture that everyone else thinks the same way, but you're completely unique and think your own way. Would it not be more likely that everyone thinks in their own way, based off of their own experiences?

It seems quite believable that there is a multidimensional Gaussian distribution of thinking styles, and people at the edge of one or more dimensions can legitimately say that they don't think like most others.

[unconed]

I do live my own life, quite happily, and don't wallow in self-pity. I merely shared an insight that has helped me make more sense of my life after 30 years of living it. I never said I was unique, merely that I deviated from the norm. "I am a lot taller than most people" does not mean "I am a unique giant, woe is me, doomed to tower over the rest of humanity". It does mean that those people get to complain a bit more about cramped airplane seats.

My advice would be to leave the single-comment psychoanalysis at home, and the platitudes like "live your own life" to the trashy advice columns... Instead, go watch the documentary on Temple Grandin, an autist who is definitely further from the average than I am, and whose awareness of her own nature—as well as her ability to explain it to others—definitely improved her own life.

[crntaylor]

I don't have a voice in my head. When I learnt from reddit discussions that most people experience their inner thoughts as an inner monologue, I was flabbergasted. If I heard a voice, I would think I was going insane.

I think that's pretty normal. A quick poll of the other three people in the room reveals that none of us experience an 'inner voice'. It's more like a stream of associations, some of which might involve vocalised words, others might involve images, sounds, or recalled emotions. Sometimes the associations are sequential, sometimes they are parallel. Steven Pinker refers to this as 'mentalese'.

Edit: also, this: http://xkcd.com/610/

[sliverstorm]

I'm pretty sure the "inner voice" is just a metaphor to describe a concept. I, too, do not hear a voice echoing in my head as if God was speaking inside my skull. I have a train of thought that I could directly translate to spoken words, but is not actually in words. It is more abstract; I shuffle around ideas. Sometimes I will speak aloud to myself when I'm trying to disassociate to find a new viewpoint, but that's about as far as the inner voice goes.

Of course, this could potentially be less typical than I usually assume. I've noticed writing notes to work through my thoughts is ridiculously limiting, because my train of thought goes 2-10x faster than I can write or draw. I've always wondered about that, because it seems to be a popular method for brainstorming.

[nitrogen]

I'm pretty sure the "inner voice" is just a metaphor to describe a concept.

I have both a strong inner voice (which is not perceived as a "voice of God" but more like speaking without uttering) and a weaker mind's eye, and a mind's ear (I can listen to songs I know with what seems like perfect reproduction, though it's definitely perceived as internal rather than external in origin). I also have peripheral awareness of other inputs into my thought process. I sometimes have ideas present themselves all at once, as though several words are silently present in the back of my consciousness, or as abstract notions, or as connections between components in a system. In the end, though, my thoughts don't feel "official" until I've serialized them into a linguistic stream, or at least given the mental images a good "look". This makes reading slower, as I have to read the words at roughly a spoken pace, but I still experience vivid imagery, and occasionally wonder how I ended up back in my house when I take a break from a really good book ;-).

For me, writing is definitely slower than thought. When I first attack a problem, dozens of concepts, edge cases, and other considerations will "come at me" from all corners of my mind. For me writing my ideas down isn't about brainstorming, but calming the storm.

I'm curious what my mental model of my mental model looks like in terms of neuronal connections. I'm also curious how many people are curious about their own thought processes. This discussion thread on HN has been very interesting, as we've seen comments from many different types of minds, all capable of expressing in verbal form their different ways of perceiving thought.

[guizzy]

As someone with a very dominant "inner voice", I have to say that, at least to me, it is exactly as having a voice echoing in my head, constantly. More precisely, I happen to think exclusively in dialogues. I imagine talking to a person, and I hear the conversation I would have with that person in my head, and their counterpoints.

It gets tiring. Recently I've taken up drawing; when I draw my head is finally quiet.

[mindcrime]

More precisely, I happen to think exclusively in dialogues. I imagine talking to a person, and I hear the conversation I would have with that person in my head, and their counterpoints.

I'm pretty much the same way. I'm not sure I'd say I exactly "hear" my "inner voice" but my thinking is definitely dominated by "spoken word" stuff.

Of course, I also talk to myself out loud sometimes, when working on a hard problem. Not sure how "normal" that is, but I can't say I really care a whole lot either.

[bosky101]

same here. also when i read or type something, i hear my 'inner voice' speak it out. funny, as i type this out - the voice goes exactly in the same speed that i type, in a sort of coaxing comforting way. maybe has something to do with teachers dictating, and me jotting them down throughout schooling.

i'm curious what happens in peoples minds when the sign goes from red to green at a crossing/signal. some people almost always need to hear a honk or someone moving ahead of them before they realise it's already green and being ahead means you may not get that visual cue you would if you were further behind.

it would be interesting to see what techniques f1 racers or 100 metre sprinters use to get their minds to tell their bodies to 'get off the block'.

[Natsu]

I mostly do that too, but I can switch. For example, to trying to process everything visually, perhaps wandering through familiar places in my mind (or listening to familiar voices/songs).

Or you can turn it all off and focus entirely on your senses themselves. This can be interesting when, for example, you imagine something in contact with your body as a part of yourself. Do that to your car, for example, then you start to pay more attention to exactly how your wheels grip the road and you have a more intuitive feel for where every part of the car is in relation to you.

[mcantelon]

I know that feeling about drawing getting your mind out of the inner dialog. Meditation is probably the same.

[philh]

> I'm pretty sure the "inner voice" is just a metaphor to describe a concept.

Amusingly, as someone with an inner voice, I used to think the same thing about the mind's eye. I couldn't visualise anything with it, and I asked someone else and he couldn't do it either, so I decided probably no one could do it.

Since then I've realised that the people who talk about visualising things are... y'know, actually visualising things. It turns out that some people do and some people don't.

[sliverstorm]

Huh. I figured much the same way with mind's eye; much like my thoughts, I "visualize" in a very abstract fashion. I don't see the object, I just know it. So there are in fact people, who see it?

[sillysaurus]

I figured much the same way with mind's eye; much like my thoughts, I "visualize" in a very abstract fashion. I don't see the object, I just know it. So there are in fact people, who see it?

I do. I don't really know what to say about it, so if you have any specific questions, feel free. I'll try to explain what it's like.

Example: when I see a math expression x times y, I mentally see a rectangle with side length labeled "x" and perpendicular labeled "y". So understanding (x+h)*(x+h) = x^2 + 2xh + h^2 was totally natural for me. It's not abstract symbols to me, it's pictures in my head. I see a tiny square in the upper right labeled "h^2", and a big square in the lower left labeled "x^2", and two rectangles along the edges labeled "xh".

I never memorized the derivatives of sine or cosine. I just figure them out whenever I need them. Takes a half second or so. Basically, when I need to know a derivative like sine, in my mind I pull up a function plot of sine. I look at the origin (x=0,y=0) and visually see that it passes through the origin and slopes upwards. So I know "when it starts out, sine is already sloped upwards, and as it goes along it slopes less and less, so therefore its derivative starts out as some large positive quantity and decelerates, which is exactly how cosine behaves. So the derivative of sine is cosine." For the derivative of cosine it's similar. I pull up its graph in my head and go "oh, it starts out with zero slope, but then as it goes along it slopes downwards, so it has a negative derivative. Sine starts out at zero, and negative sine would slope downwards as it goes along, so the derivative of cos is -sin." The process isn't as clearly separated as the words I'm using though.

When someone's talking with me about a program's architecture or about a design concept, I picture nodes in my head representing the components of the program. If he mentions a module, I create a new node and label it. If he says it interacts with another module, I draw a connecting line. Eventually I'll have a mental picture of the full system as we're talking.

I usually have a crisp mental picture of each function I write, before I write it. Not individual lines of code; just a clear understanding of its structure, the steps it will perform, and all possible side effects.

My favorite time is just before I nod off to sleep. Laying there with my eyes closed, a dark "hallway" seems to form in front of me, and I start to float forwards through it. Shapes begin to emerge toward me out of the blackness, and I morph them into animals or goblins or whatever I feel like molding them into. Sometimes I lose control and my mind generates horrifying faces or misshapen bodies. I see all of this with the same clarity as waking vision, and the colors are just as vivid. But it's a very narrow field of view, as if I can't see more than a spotlight's width at a time.

[msutherl]

This was fascinating to read. I think in much the same way, but less vividly. For instance, when reading a formula, I do not immediately form a picture in my mind. I can do this if I've taken the time to establish the association, but with algebra I'm prone to rely on my visual understanding of the rules. Instead of switching to a visual representation, I've learned to visually move the symbols around on the page according to visual analogs of the rules of algebra.

I do, however, do exactly the same thing when derivating the sine function since it is so closely associated with the graph of sin(x) by default.

I found your example of building system diagrams interesting. I think I may do the same thing, but often it is unconscious. I do not see the image as I'm constructing it, but if I look, it's probably there.

I'm also tempted to suggest that I have a secondary mode of thinking that involves constructing arbitrarily complex logical trees (i.e. if this is the case, then this must be the case) since I seem to detect logical inconsistencies intuitively and without delay. I do not see them, they just occur to me with no representation at all. Perhaps this is a bit like the "just know it" type of thinking expressed in the parent post.

[com2kid]

Example: when I see a math expression x times y, I mentally see a rectangle with side length labeled "x" and perpendicular labeled "y". So understanding (x+h)(x+h) = x^2 + 2xh + h^2 was totally natural for me. It's not abstract symbols to me, it's pictures in my head. I see a tiny square in the upper right labeled "h^2", and a big square in the lower left labeled "x^2", and two rectangles along the edges labeled "xh".*

For me, it is the exact opposite. Teachers would spend ages trying to explain this to me, eventually I just had to accept the equation as being true, it never has really made intuitive sense to me. I dealt with it by coming to the conclusion that it is just the way math is agreed upon being done in the particular syntax we have all agreed upon using.

A good # of math courses later (enough for a minor in mathematics) and that is still basically my understanding. Physical diagrams don't really mean much. For some things they are useful, mostly for intro calculus concepts (which is a subject I find to be amazingly visualizable in general), but I just had to basically take all of Algebra on faith as being "agree upon syntax".

[mercurialshark]

This sounds a lot like synesthesia. Not the association of colors and sounds, but visual-mathematical synesthesia. There are people, like you, that can do arithmetic simply by looking at number-boards that float in the field of vision, like a visual slide-rule.

While I conceptualize differently than you, I do play the "morphing shapes/structures game," falling asleep, but it's in black and white. Also, I float around objects on all axises, like floating around the exterior of a spaceship...

[likeclockwork]

This was really interesting. There's some stuff that seems similar to the way I work and some stuff that is completely different.

Like for you, you process math as a visual representation of what's happening. For me, math is just a written language. I don't see anything, I just read it, write in it, and think it when neccesary.

If there's something I can't understand without a diagram I can try to imagine one, but I usually just draw one. To imagine a system it's like 'speaking with my hands'(or like I've read that sign language works), I arrange the symbols in space, I know where they are in relationship to each other and how they interact. This set is over here, its members go through this function over there, ends up in this bucket here. I guess it's more symbolic and spatial than visual. It's like building a factory or some other kind of apparatus out of symbols that have various relationships or interactions.

All of this happens as I move symbols around on paper or the screen also. It's how I learned how to do math in my head as a kid, repeating things to myself and placing symbols in space.

I also have a strong inner monologue. I tend to think mostly in language but there's also a 'compiled' component, in that when I've really processed something just the symbol is enough.. they don't necessarily have names, I can't put a name to them. In my internal monologue they're just spaces that are filled with feelings I guess. So f(x), that I've internalized might be something like "So, when we put ___ through ___(this one is f) we'll get.."

I suppose sometimes I have no idea what the hell I'm thinking about in terms of a specific symbol and it stands for some computation I haven't completed but I can see how to complete.

I wish I had started with functional programming and lambda calculus, thunks and lambdas seem to map pretty closely to my software.

I also love just when I nod off to sleep, but mainly because that's the best time for me to think. That's the time when I can truly visualize whatever I want and in that state I feel like I can simulate the machines I'm thinking about freely.

[pm215]

I tend more towards inner monologue, but it's not 'the voice of God', it's like I constantly talk to myself, only not out loud. On the other hand I can't visualise images internally at all.

I think it's fascinating how we all have basically the same brain hardware but can end up with remarkably different inner experiences.

[dcfindlay]

It's a metaphor, but only just. I talk to myself in my head, but only at the end of a thought process once I've formed some ideas and I'm trying to crystallise them into an argument that sounds right. Like others have said here, if you switch to thinking in English too early on you cripple yourself -- it's just too slow and linear for dealing with multiple threads, relationships and associations, which our minds are brilliant at.

Like you suggested, I also think in spoken words when I'm questioning myself, playing devil's advocate. "Why does that matter?" "Is such and such really the case? Prove it." "You're ignoring some really important factor over here."

I find thinking AND trying to record stuff frustrating. If I'm dictating to a recorder I'll always speak in fragments of sentences, or talk ridiculously fast if I'm on a train of thought, because I can feel the next three or four links & associations coming, and I'm scared of losing them while I finish the one I'm currently talking about. Of course, being scared of losing them pretty much guarantees that you do.

Regarding the "inner voice", I find it's always self-directed. I can keep thinking, but choose to talk or not talk in my head. I suppose, if ever you get words in your head that aren't self-directed, pay very close attention.

[svachalek]

Pretty interesting topic and responses. For one more data point, I can create an internal voice and/or images but neither happens by default. If I need to verbalize my thoughts I often have a practice conversation in my head, to see how it comes out in words. I also find it very easy to not think about anything, mind blank and just taking the world in, which seems to be considered a "weird" ability in some circles.

[robbiep]

I am very similar to you

[Raphael]

It sucks that writing is slower than thinking, but it has to be done because thoughts are fleeting. You need enough notes to remember later or trigger recreate roughly the same idea.

[path411]

By writing do you mean typing? While I don't have the same kind of need to work out my thoughts, typing is a relief over writing as I can type significantly faster than I can write or even speak. Allowing me to express myself much closer to the speed of my thoughts provides much better productivity.

[gwern]

This whole discussion reminds me very strongly of http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/ 's example about the 1800s debate about whether people could actually visualize things mentally or whether that was just a metaphor.

[6ren]

> If I heard a voice

It's more like talking to yourself. (There's a school of thought that language is thought; related is Sapir–Whorf). The limitation of words is a strength; it enables you to pin down ideas precisely, like butterflies for careful examination. But do it too soon, and they slip through the net.

Capturing thought in words implies that thought differs from words; but words are an important tool of thought. Linguistic thought seems a builtin for humans and our intelligence would be less if we did not have words - and not just for communication/collaboration and external storage.

BTW: There was a study of mathematicians done about a century ago IIRC, and it was found that about 70% of them thought visually about mathematics; about 15% verbally/linguistically; and only 5% thought in actual mathematical notation.

[yuushi]

This is actually discussed in some length in Jacques Hadamards "The Mathematicians Mind" - although I'm certainly no psychologist or neurologist, and some of the ideas are probably incredibly out of date, it was interesting reading nonetheless.

[rachelbythebay]

I latched onto the part of your post about thinking in another language. Way back in school, I had these 90 minute long immersive Spanish classes. You had to speak Spanish the whole time, even for the most ordinary things. It was intended to get you really using the language, and it apparently worked. Here's why.

I eventually realized that for a few minutes after leaving that class, as I walked to my bus, my inner monologue was running in Spanish, too. I might be thinking about the same things, but the words used for them would be different. This would slowly click back over as I started hearing and talking to my fellow students, and I'd be back to normal a few minutes after that.

The thing is, this adaptive behavior isn't limited to extremes like EN vs. ES. There are different subsets of the language which swap in and out of my speech depending on who's around. I speak one way here on HN, for instance, knowing a bit about my potential audience. I wouldn't sound quite like this with random family members, after all.

What I'm guessing based on what you've said here is that this adaptation might not be a universal thing. Maybe some people just have their preferred language and use it no matter what their audience might be. Perhaps other people pick up on this and think they're "weird" since they're not using the common "code" of the rest of the group. Curious.

[rdtsc]

> I convert all the important ideas in my life into mental pictures and animations.

Ha! I thought I was pretty strange for doing that too. Unsurprisingly I always like to squiggle on pen and paper to visually organize things. I'd draw boxes and arrows. Or I like computer languages with pattern matching (like Erlang and Haskell). It might be related.

Also I speak 3 (human ;-) )languages and understand 4. 2 of those I learned in parallel while growing up. That has helped me form abstraction that are common between the two and not necessarily tied to either one.

While we are at it. I never knew what to answer when people say "so what language to do you dream in". I always think "huh, people I guess dream in languages?". Because in my dreams and experiences happen but they are mostly visual (with exceptions).

[jrockway]

Podcasts are popular not because they're better, but because they take less time to produce. Say you want to get an idea out. Turn on your microphone and rant for 30 minutes. Done. Now imagine you want to write an essay on the same topic. It's going to take a lot longer than 30 minutes. (People listen to podcasts for the same reason they buy People magazine. It's easy and "social".)

[drewrv]

I listen to podcasts so I can do other things while absorbing information or entertainment, such as driving, doing the dishes, or grocery shopping. In other words, it is efficient!

[marssaxman]

Ha. Is that what they're for? I rarely listen to podcasts or video recordings of lectures precisely because I can't do anything else while I'm listening - not if I want to actually hear what's being said.

Alas, I can read much faster than anyone can speak, so listening to someone talk feels like an exercise in tedium compared to just reading a transcript.

The RSA Animate talks work, though - the video adds enough to keep me from getting bored and wandering off.

[michaelgrafl]

I can do things at the same time that don't require my attention, like driving on a known route, using an exercise bike, cooking, etc.

I can and will listen to music when I'm doing graphic design.

I prefer silence when I'm doing logical thinking that requires me to use my inner voice, like programming or writing prose. Although I recently found out that it helps when I'm listening to music while writing song lyrics, because it enables me to write from the gut instead of overthinking stuff.

[natural219]

I view it in terms of System 1 / System 2 learning. Podcasts are great for system 2-style learning, where you absorb vocabulary and ideas into your subconscious. Then, when you're ready to sit down and actually learn the stuff, you have a nice scaffold of familiar words and phrases with which you can put together in the correct order.

[sliverstorm]

I think it is important to distinguish here; you do not necessarily think differently from other people. You LEARN differently, which is VERY COMMON.

Supporting anecdotal evidence: I usually learn best with written words and supporting visualizations. My mother and youngest brother on the other hand are highly visual, and have an awful time with written words. They need imagery. This is all contrasted to the auditory method common in our schools, and this is just within my family.

[nitrogen]

Learning and thinking are different processes, and it's conceivable that one person can have different learning and thinking styles. The way you've capitalized LEARN and italicized think leads me to suspect that you're restating a simplification that I've heard from some friends, and I thus assume is taught in introductory college psychology classes as one of those "lies we tell children."

[realitygrill]

It's interesting, but psychologists have found no evidence of learning styles.

title: "Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence" abstract: http://psi.sagepub.com/content/9/3/105.abstract fulltext: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.p...

[tokipin]

I'm like this too. It's awe-some power, but the downside is that serializing my ideas into language is, in the words of Bjork, "like trying to put an ocean through a straw." It's extreme enough in my case that I often sound completely retarded when speaking. Don't get me started about my many adventures in interview land. -.-

Feynman on the distinct modes of thinking that people possess:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y

[jongraehl]

??? If I may risk the typical mind fallacy, most people don't think in words most of the time. Just like typing or writing can serve as structure or canvas, imagining words is for special circumstances. For planning to say or write (and sometimes suppressing). For remembering something you heard or read. For imagining interactions or temporarily believing in hypotheses. For prayer, if you're into that.

(I have known people who talk out loud often enough about whatever preoccupies them that I must assume that they're in-their-head doing the same thing much of the time, so these people do exist - I just question if they're most people).

I do find myself remembering things I've read, said, or heard, when they seem relevant. I have vast amounts of "knowledge" that's waiting to be connected to real life experience.

That said, I wouldn't put too much stock into anyone's description of what their whole brain is doing. Why would we know? I find it's sometimes best to just pause, stop trying to steer, and wait for my brain to come up with something, no pressure. Just whatever comes up in response to a question or puzzle in the next X seconds (pick a small amount of time and commit to not act at all until it passes seems best).

[flyinRyan]

I find this post extremely interesting. Are you saying spoken language plays no role in your thoughts at all, ever?

From various sources I've read over the years has always suggested to me that what one can think is constrained by what one can say (e.g. Pirahã). If you truly don't do any language conversion at all when not actually speaking to other humans that would mean my pseudo theory is completely invalid.

Personally, all my thought process is certainly not "inner monologue" based (and note this isn't something I "hear"). In fact, from what I can tell the "inner monologue" is the slowest form but it's also the most concrete. The faster forms of thinking slip away quickly, like a dream [1].

[1] This was described in an article some time back. A deaf sign language teacher met a man who was in his 20's and had no language at all. She gradually taught him sign language but after he become proficient and she tried to question him on his thoughts before he had language he resisted describing it. Then later he actually couldn't remember anymore. He claimed it all went away (over 20 years of living!) like a dream.

[jongraehl]

[Sapir-Whorf](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity) is what you're thinking of. The case is usually dramatically overstated.

Clearly he's written a coherent comment. Language plays a role whether he knows it or not :)

[tokipin]

A factoid about brains: we can attach a given type of input (say, visual input) to any one of a variety of brain regions X Y Z, and each such region is capable of learning that type of input. But these regions are unlikely to all be similar.

So even though, for example, we all seem to understand English, it's quite likely that different peoples' understanding of the various aspects of the language can arise through architecturally distinct brain regions. As you say, there is a veneer of similarity that hides how differently different people actually experience the world.

[wmil]

This is a very interesting topic, I recommend you read:

"Generalizing from one example" - http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/

and watch Temple Gradin's TED talk "The World Needs All Kinds of Minds"- http://blog.ted.com/2010/02/24/the_world_needs/

[zallarak]

I also hear from others that I think "totally differently" - but when they tell me that, I also realize everyone thinks totally differently! The mind is immensely complex, and I think it's a positive thing if we still attempt to communicate and do things with people very different from us.